Mountain of the Dead (World's Scariest Places)

Boy I tell you what, this was a great story! He did a wonderful job of bringing the past and telling the story of the Dyatlov expedition and putting the modern day story of the ones who wanted to investigate it. I watched several series on the Dyatlov expedition and was excited when I found this was the subject of his new book. He had information and pictures that I didn't see on TV. I like how he put his spin on it and filled in the missing gaps of what happened to the Dyatlov group along with the true facts. The modern story, what a ride that was! The ending was chilling and made my heart pump fast. Shocking and thrilling. He also did a great job of putting the modern day expedition in the same footsteps as the Dyatlov group. I am now out of Mr. Jeremy Bates' books to read so I hope a new one is coming soon! I highly recommend this book and all of his others. He is very talented!

I first learned about the tragedy of the Dyatlov Pass incident on a cryptozoology site describing the hairy hominid theory for what happened to those poor people in 1959. My interest was immediately piqued, and I’ve read a lot about the doomed hiking expedition since. Fresh from watching Liam Le Guillou’s documentary, An Unknown Compelling Force, I started reading Mountain of the Dead. After the documentary the ten hikers of the Dyatlov party were fresh in my mind, so I loved that Bates included photographs of their trip and even some real excerpts from their journal. I found their chapters the most compelling in the book and I was interested how he explained their deaths. While I loved the story revolving around the modern day expedition- it gave me exactly what I was looking for - I found the characters hard to like. Corey, Disco and Olivia seemed like grotesque caricatures rather than real people, and even Corey’s tragic backstory rang hollow. However, I really enjoyed what happened to them in the Urals and I loved the world building around their experiences.

I consume a lot of reading material. This one absolutely held my attention and interest the entire read. I cannot recommend it enough.

In 1959, Nine russian hikers camping in a remote part of Siberia, led by Igor Dyatlov, leave their tent during a blizzard and a few days later rescuers find all nine dead in mysterious. circumstances. Despite numerous investigations the mysery has never been satisfactorily solved. So far the story is true. Look up Dyatlov Pass on Wikipedia. The book splits into two overlapping narratives. The first follows the journey of the doomed hikers from their start in Yekateringurg Siberia to their deaths at Death Mountain Pass, renamed Dyatlorv pass in their memory. You can still see their memorial there today (See picture above from Wikipedia) . The other strand follows a modern party who are on an expedition to visit the pass and solve the mystery where previous investigations have failed. Throughout the story is illustrated by genuine photographs from 1959 many taken by the hikers themselves as their expedition proceeds. We come to identify with them on their journey and this really adds to our ivolvement in their story and their deaths. The modern expedition finally solves the mystery. Is this the true answer? Read the book and decide for yourselves. I have given this five stars for the plot, the ingenious way reality and fiction are blended, the characters, who are both well-drawn and engage our sympathy, the excellent written style and the descriptions of the Siberian landscapes. The book is billed as horror, but, despite some violent scenes, I think this is not correct. To my mind it is an ingenious and sensitive tale well told and well worth reading. I recommend it highly.

Interesting story based (very loosely, apparently) on an actual incident. Very taken with the photos included of the original Dyatlov group. Part One very well-written and brings the reader into the action, becoming "un-put-downable." However, Part Two is mostly schlock and cookie-cutter genre (I won't say why because of spoilers). Overall good writing, but marred by lack of editorial oversight, so many diction and spelling errors, which were distracting. My next read will be Donnie Eichar's Dead Mountain, but I probably won't be reading any more of this author's series. I have a feeling I know how they will turn out, and many of the reviews here bear this intuition out. Later edit: I'm about halfway through Eichar's book, which was published in 2013. Mildly disturbed to find many striking similarities between Eichar's book and this, Jeremy Bates' , book, which was published in 2018. The similarities go beyond using the same limited source material, where it is expected that they would overlap quite a bit. But the decisions as to what items to emphasize and which to leave out, some striking similarities in sentence structure, and so on, left me with the strong impression that Bates didn't really bother to do his own research from the source material -- possibly just read Eichar's book and went on from there to develop his schlock horror genre ending. Nothing really wrong with that, but I've read other books about strking historical events where the source material is limited -- for example, books about the Shackleton incident -- and although the events of the various books are familiar, I've never had such a strong impression that one author had just copied from another.

I've had a long break from reading and just picked it up again recently. This was my second book to read this week and I really enjoyed it. At first I thought the revelation of what happened to the hikers was a little disappointing, but things got better and better. Finished it much quicker than I planned to and now waiting for more books to be delivered by this author.

Male Yeti are aggressive, don't try to feed them. You wouldn't would you ? I got the book on Bookbub and quite enjoyed the read. The swapping time lines was a bit off putting, jumping back to 1959 just when I was getting into the modern expedition and vice versa. The cave part actually had me feeling claustrophobic, the descriptive writing was so good.

Enjoyed this book quite a bit. Well written characters and very nicely tied in facts to this fictional work. Looking forward to picking up the rest of this series now.

very interesting

Lost a bit of sleep with this one, but that's a good thing. Based on the true mystery of 9 hikers who died on the now infamous Dyatlov Pass in the Siberian Ural mountains in 1959. The mysterious aspect of why these healthy, fit hikers all abandoned their strong canvas tent, ill prepared for the blizzard conditions they found themselves in, some even only partially dressed has confounded history buffs for decades. Has Jeremy Bates come up with the real reason behind their deaths? Maybe. Enough to say that conspiracy theorists will love this book! The book was written in a fascinating style: alternating chapters between the 1959 hikers and a current day writer, who is researching for a new book on the Dyatlov group's deaths by recreating their expedition. This made for an engrossing and satisfying read, as Bates gives you a little snippet of what the hikers must have gone through, then switched, leaving you wanting to read more, with each chapter fitting neatly into the previous, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Having read The Catacombs, part of the World's Scariest Places series, I was keen to read other books in the series. This one is by far the best I've come across. The ending almost lost me (no spoilers here) when things started to get a little too whimsical for my liking, but Bates recovers it nicely by returning to the dark, violent and suspenseful style he is known for. A great read for anyone who love alternative history, and great horror based on real events.